Ragunathan Thevaruban, Husin Hazlina, Wood Colin D
Department of Petroleum Engineering, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Bandar Seri Iskandar, Seri Iskandar 31750, Perak Darul Ridzuan, Malaysia.
Energy Unit, CSIRO Australian Resources Research Centre, 26 Dick Perry Avenue, Bentley, Western Australia 6102, Australia.
ACS Omega. 2020 Jul 29;5(31):19342-19349. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.0c00753. eCollection 2020 Aug 11.
The ever-increasing demand for the finite source of oil has led oil production companies to produce and transport the produced crude oil as efficiently and economically as possible. One of the major concerns especially in waters like the South China Sea is the deposition of wax on the walls of the pipeline or wellbore, constricting and hindering the hydrocarbon flow. This is due to the low seabed temperatures, which can be below the wax appearance temperature (WAT), leading to the deposition of wax out of waxy crude oil through the molecular dispersion mechanism. Currently, many prevention and remedy methods are in place to overcome the problem, but most of the additives possess environmental threat, as most of the chemical solutions used are toxic, nonorganic, and costly. Hence, this paper aims to provide some insights into the effect of palm oil derivatives such as crude palm oil (CPO) and crude palm kernel oil (CPKO) on wax inhibition. The effect of aging time (i.e., immersion time) was also evaluated. A comparison was made between paraffin inhibition efficiency results (PIE %) obtained by CPO, CPKO, poly(ethylene--vinyl acetate) (EVA), and triethanolamine (TEA). It was observed that the average efficiency of 81.67% was obtained when 1% CPO was added to heavy crude oil. The wax inhibition performance reached a plateau after 1.5 h of aging time for all of the investigated samples.
对有限石油资源不断增长的需求促使石油生产公司尽可能高效且经济地生产和运输原油。尤其在南海这样的海域，一个主要问题是蜡在管道或井筒壁上的沉积，这会限制和阻碍烃类流动。这是由于海床温度较低，可能低于蜡析出温度（WAT），导致蜡质原油中的蜡通过分子分散机制析出并沉积。目前，有许多预防和补救方法来解决这个问题，但大多数添加剂都存在环境威胁，因为所使用的大多数化学溶液有毒、非有机且成本高昂。因此，本文旨在深入探讨棕榈油衍生物如毛棕榈油（CPO）和毛棕榈仁油（CPKO）对蜡抑制的影响。还评估了老化时间（即浸泡时间）的影响。对CPO、CPKO、聚（乙烯 - 醋酸乙烯酯）（EVA）和三乙醇胺（TEA）获得的石蜡抑制效率结果（PIE%）进行了比较。观察到当向重质原油中添加1%的CPO时，平均效率达到81.67%。对于所有研究的样品，老化时间为1.5小时后，蜡抑制性能达到平稳状态。
